I was too chicken to fight a bear for supper

BEARS have been making headlines rather a lot recently. We had the great Helen Mirren chasing one from the garden of her home in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Naturally she scolded it: ‘Bad bear! Very bad bear! Bad naughty bear!’ Unsurprisingly the bear ran off.

In any contest between a 30 stone bear and the scary Dame Helen I know who I’d back.

Then we had the bear in Romania who wandered up to a group of tourists, posed for a selfie, laid his paw on the woman’s leg and ambled off again.

But I can top all this stuff. I was once almost licked to death by one big black bear and shared my dinner with another. We were asleep in our canvas tent in the Smoky Mountains when I was woken by a horrible snuffling sound and the whole tent started shaking. I was terrified. I peaked under the edge of the canvas and saw two black furry feet with big claws. What to do?

I poked my head out a little further. The bear was licking the tent pole. The very pole I had coated with butter the day before because it was a bit rusty. I lay still, hoping the butter wasn’t just the starter before the main course of small children.

A few weeks later — after driving clear across the continent — we were camping in Yosemite. This time I was still awake when the bear arrived: reading outside the tent while my family slept. He ambled up, gave me a cursory nod, spotted the cool box, ripped off the lid with one swipe of a massive paw, rooted around and ambled off again with a chicken between his jaws.

That was meant to be our dinner for the next two nights and there are no supermarkets in the wilderness. When my hungry kids complained the next day, I said: ‘Well what should I have done? Ripped the chicken from its mouth? He might have eaten me instead!’

Their looks suggested I should at least have given it a try.